The Doctor is perhaps unique amongst heroes in many ways, but one of his more remarkable powers is his ability to team up with himself. Of course, these team ups are rare, because it’s often quite tricky to get all of the former Doctor Who lead actors together in the same place whilst they’re still young enough to do it. Luckily for us, comic books have no such restrictions.
Last year, Titan Comics released a mini-series called FOUR DOCTORS. THE DOCTOR WHO EVENT 2015: FOUR DOCTORS compiles all these issues into one graphic novel that easily fits on the shelf. The set-up is pretty simple; we’re introduced to the War Doctor, who has teamed up with obscure aliens of the week, The Voord, to beat up Daleks. The Voord have an agenda of their own, of course and it’s nice to see these weird creatures get the spotlight. Events then proceed to drag the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors into one long sequence of time travel hi-jinks.
It’s quite clear that writer and Doctor Who mega-fan Paul Cornell is having amazing amounts of fun throughout this book; the author’s sheer glee at getting to play with so many distinct characters at once practically shines off every page. In addition to giving the dear old Voord an airing, we get some cracking interaction between the three Doctors. On that subject, part of the ‘joke’ here is that the story only really covers three Doctors. We see glimpses of others, but really it’s about the three post-Time War timelords. Of course, they couldn’t call it the Three Doctors, because one of the TV stories has that name. Besides, the Three Doctors only really featured two of them heavily. (Same goes for the Five Doctors; only four of them get in on the action.) Given this fine tradition of getting the number of Doctors wrong in the story title, the book’s name is spot on. Very clever.
The artwork is solid, as always. Neil Edwards captures the energy of various companions very well, and he gets the spirit of the various Doctors totally right on each and every page. Of particular note is his take on Capaldi, who not only looks like the Oscar winning actor, but also looks like a mix of previous incarnations of the Doctor, especially the First and Fourth.
Overall, FOUR DOCTORS is a bit of treat. Well worth your time.
DOCTOR WHO: FOUR DOCTORS / WRITER: PAUL CORNELL / ARTIST: NEIL EDWARDS / PUBLISHER: TITAN / RELEASE DATE: 9TH FEBRUARY
